Final day!
I ate the last of the rice, fried it with a bell pepper, some carrots, and a few tomatoes. I also ate an apple and a few bowls of oatmeal, which was quite tasty. While I ate those together the first few days, later on I stopped bothering and instead ate the apple separately.

I’ll write a somewhat more ponderous post about the experience later, and this week I’m having a go at not buying food since I have a good deal of food around the house that could do with being eaten.
With the exception of getting me some handy food for the coming weekend. Might be prudent as it’s possible I’ll spend it among mostly omni’s.

Today was a bit meh. Lazy and no interest in doing anything much. Never mind doing dishes so I could do something approaching proper cooking.
Tomorrow.

This made the whole day a bit of a loss, food-wise. Breakfast was skipped again, so instead I had my usual four sammiches to start off my day, and due to the aforementioned apathy, I just made me some ramen noodles instead of a decent dinner.
Not that it wasn’t tasty, mind.
I also defrosted a plain chocolate muffin/cupcake/whatever just because I wanted to.

Another not-so-clever thing I did today was stop by an Asian supermarket. The greens I bought will be put to good use at some point, and I talked myself into not buying any frozen dumplings, which doesn’t happen too often. Though as I got there around dinner time with a rumbling stomach, I did buy me some pandan nata de coco to tide me over until I’d get home. While not horrible or anything, nata de coco is hardly my favourite food, and this whole thing could’ve been prevented simply by bringing an apple.
Oh well. Only two days left.

Dinner:
Soup made out of the remaining yellow split pea mash by adding some water to it and stirring it properly, adding three chopped carrots and some of the rice to that.

The soup looked a bit dismal. It looked like the sort of thing you see in war films, with a lot of people waiting in line with a bowl that gets filled with beige watery stuff with sad bits floating in, goop that looks neither particularly nourishing nor any kind of tasty.

Lookie!

Good thing I have salt, pepper, and soya sauce, really. And the parsley I remembered to add to the second bowl. A bit of pale green may not have made too big a difference, but still. It made it just that little bit cheerier.

So my soup looked like that. Though my bowl, while not exactly cheery (I think it’s from the 70s. Random brown and grey) had flowers. I guess I should’ve gone with the the other bowl, the one with more prominent poppies.
The whole thing made me think of The Supersizers Go… Wartime, really. To be honest, this entire challenge made me think of that. Good episode, that. The entire show was awesomely brilliant and fun. Though very NOT VEGAN, in case you have the chance to watch an episode, any episode.

I’m also feeling this week’s menu is lacking variety for a bit. So far, at least. Then again, I’m not sure this is much less varied than the way I usually eat. It’s just involved fewer grocery runs.
Should’ve maybe eaten some fruit today… Skip one meal, and suddenly it’s a fruitless day.

Uneventful day, food-wise. Could’ve put in some more veg, to be honest. Maybe I’ll have a carroty snack later.
Should probably finish the pea mush tomorrow. Maybe I’ll make some soup out of it. Add some water, one or two carrots… Should work.

I’ve just come back from the annual UK trip with the band (though no Sinead this year, unfortunately). This year was the 250th anniversary of the battle of Minden (big parade, unfortunately without Brigadier Coutts), so some Dutch re-enactors of KOSB-ness were sharing the barracks with us. It’s always amusing to expose new people to something like pb&kale sammiches.

While doing my usual enthusiastic grocery shopping I came across something so British I would’ve bought it even if I loathed the stuff.
The things I came across? Marmite rice cakes and Marmite breadsticks.

Luckily I’m rather fond of the stuff so I didn’t just buy it for the novelty value. While it’s not, as far as I know, particularly popular in the Netherlands, I’ve always had access to it. Not sure if my parents liked it (though they might have. My mum used to eat that smelly green Swiss powdered cheese. People eating that might eat anything), but my grandma always had it (should’ve bought here a bag too, perhaps…). I doubt I much cared for it until I went vegetarian or even vegan, but now? Good stuff.
So the idea of rice cakes and breadsticks, two foods my mum gave me as snacks when I was a kid, with Marmite, a food which is, to me, both very British and very family? Made me quite happy indeed.

The rice cakes were most tasty. Properly Marmite-y but not so much Marmite that the taste is overwhelming. The breadsticks, however, I didn’t like quite as much. They weren’t bad, just not as Marmite-y as I would have liked. They were kind of bland, only slightly more flavourful than your basic plain breadsticks. Shame, really. If they still exist next time I have the opportunity to buy me some I’ll stick to the rice cakes.

– – –

The day after we came home, we had a barbeque.
I’m not very good at barbeques. It’s not a social event that played a big part of my upbringing or something I have particularly fond memories of, and after going vegan, spending an evening watching dead bits get cooked is not exactly my idea of a fun time.
However, this one would be attended by some people who’d been unable to come along on the trip, two of whom had gotten some very good news while we were away and I really needed to hug one of them, and it’s just a lot of fun spending some non-musical social time with these people. They’re a good bunch.
So I went.
I had intended on making some fancy stuff to show that vegans can have great barbeque food, but I was too tired and lazy to even look up something about vegan barbequeing, so I ended up simply stopping by the supermarked I passed on the way to pick up some basics that would feed me well enough.
Being: A courgette, a box of cherry tomatoes, a baguette, two portabello mushrooms, and a bag of mixed green veg.

Using the courgette, the tomatoes, the host’s garlic and the host’s cool home-made skewers, I made more vegetable skewers than I would be able to eat that evening (sharing time!). The mushrooms I just oiled and roasted.

Before roast:

After roast, with additions.

While fairly average food (portabellos could probably do with something more than just olive oil) and a lot of exposure to dead bits, I do like to count the barbeque evening as a success. I had a great time and my omni mates were positive about my food. They needed my urgings to eat some too more as an okay to eat “my” food rather than a bit of a push to eat the freaky, way too healthy stuff, which made me happy.
Of course, if they’d have framed courgette, tomato and garlic as something weird and freaky, only to be eaten on a dare or to cultivate their culinary edgy will-eat-anything image, I would have denied them the permission to ever eat Italian food again, so it was in their own best interest.

– – –

I’m still not entirely sure what Irn Bru reminds me of, but I’ve narrowed it down to something purple. Probably. Maybe brown.
Should match nicely with the orange, yeah.
Also? Walkers changed their crisps so now only the basic salty ones are vegan. Bastards. I don’t actually really like crisps, but I quite like having some Salt & Vinegar ones when in the UK just because they’re not available here and they have this sharp and rather acidic flavour which, while not wholly pleasing, is quite interesting.
The only portion-packaged S&V crisps not containing something obviously animal-derived were the McCoy ones, if I recall correctly, but they had a few things listed that I didn’t bother to try to pronounce even in my head, so I decided to just forgo crisps this year.
Luckily I found the Marmite stuff. Much better!

ETA: One thing that amused me terribly, for no other reason than the fact that it had a kangaroo on it and smuggling kangaroos into the UK makes me think of bouncy hijinks, is this DEFRA poster or what have you.